ABSTRACT
M ilitary matters are central to our interpretation of the early stages of the Roman occupation of the province of Britannia. The steady accretion of archaeological and inscriptional evidence has taken us well beyond the basic historical framework defined by well-known events, the invasion by the emperor Claudius, the revolt of Boudica and the Iceni in the reign of Nero, the seven campaigning seasons of Agricola which took the Roman presence by the mid-8os to the north of Scotland, the building of Hadrian's Wall.1 It is not difficult to see how historians and archaeologists of the current generation have extended the horizons of the subject. The library shelves are replete with volumes attesting increasing interest in the development of trade and urbanisation, the interaction between town and countryside, the construction of models which illuminate the relationship between the core of the empire and its periphery.2 Even the most superficial perusal of these volumes will soon reveal, however, that the surface of these topics hardly needs a scratch before the importance of the Roman military presence becomes as apparent and pervasive as King Charles's head in the imagination of the unfortunate Mr Dick. Not all that surprising, one might think, since despite our predilection for social and economic history, the overwhelming majority of our evidence for the first century of Roman rule in Britain, archaeological and inscriptional, is generated by the activities, the needs and the influence of the Roman army.
